sleep training or leave things be...so confused!

[lazzaroo]

I am completely confused about whether to go down the sleep training route with my 6 month old. She has never beena great sleeper in the day, although now will nap approx every 2 hours after her last wake. She is an early riser and doesn't nap for long (although very unpredicatble...sometimes 30 mins...somtimes 1hour and half!), so can have 3 or 4 naps in the day. Part of me craves a routine, partly for my sanity but also because I think she may benefit from better sleep. WE are kind of vaguely closest to the baby whisperer EASY routine, but because hse is so unpredicatble this can quickly go out of the window. The main problems are...

1. Self settling - she can't! I try not to feed her to sleep as she has always suffered badly with wind. She needs walking around to settle. Will sleep in pram and car seat.

1. Unpreciatble naps - this then has impact on feed times etc No 2 days are the same when it comes to how long she will nap for.

1. Early rising - she has recently started waking anytime between 5 and 6. I can live with the day starting at 6 but 5 just seems unreasonable!!!!

I hate the idea of leaving her to cry, as suggested by HV. Some pople say she will sort herself out but I just don't know! I worry about when the day comes for me to leave her with someone as I don't think they'd be able to settle her if she woke and I wasn't there. She's so particular!!

Any suggestions? what worked for you?

i wouldn't.
babies aren't designed to go into routines or to sleep set amounts. i would stick with feeding on demand and letting her sleep when she needs to.
do you have blackout blinds? that might help the early waking. my 1 yr old is doing the same atm and it's killing me

my second baby was a hideous, hideous sleeper and tbh things only improved when I realised that it was unreasonable expecting him to change, and I did the changing myself
so, i took myself to bed much earlier, got friends to help out with ds1, got dp to get up with them both so i could get an extr ahalf hour of sleep etc etc
once I had accepted that that was how ds2 worked it all seemed much easier to deal with

he is 2 now and a good sleeper!

Most days I completely agree to leave things be. I just doubt myself when I feel like I have paced a million miles trying ot get her to sleep or when she wakes from a nap and is yawning and rubbing her eyes within half an hour! I also find it hard when I get the ...'so what time is she due for a nap'...usually from the in-laws, who recently refered to her as the boss of the family when I replied that she sleeps when she needs to!

I am lucky that my husband usually does the early shift so I can sleep on. But as he frequently works away on business it's those days that are the longest!!! and that's when the thoughts of routing sneal in!!

Have tried the black out blind. Does't seem to have made much difference.

Wow - lazzaroo your DD and my DS sound like kindred spirits , as such, I have no advice to offer, but can commiserate with you.

I too am torn at times on whether to sleep train (although will not even mention his sleep patterns to hv as she told me 'to leave him to it' when he was 3 weeks old and told me that babies 'get bored of breast feeding' when he was 4 and a half months old ) as I would love some structure but tbh I myself am fairly easy going and so have decided to just let him be. Although I have to remind myself of that on a daily basis .

I will say that you'll probably get a lot of conflicting advice about this but only YOU know what is best for YOUR child and situation.

Good luck with your decision

I just want to add that it seems to be the general consensus that if you do decide to train you have to be very firm and completely consistent until they are trained otherwise you're just letting them cry for no reason really, which seems a bit cruel

Hang in there Lazzaroo! I could have written your post once upon a time and it was really miserable but things have got much better since DD (now 13 months) started to crawl and tire herself out. Things are still far from perfect but now that she's doing longer naps she only needs two a day so I'm not having to organise all our plans around unpredictable catnaps. Hopefully you'll also soon find, like I did, that over time she copes better with less sleep so overtiredness becomes less of an issue (which is why I was always keen to squeeze in as much daytime sleep as poss).

One thought, which I was never able to try out myself as DD was crap at sleeping for very long in the buggy, but some people say that one way of getting your baby to start napping at predictable times every day is to spend a week or so getting them to do all their naps at the same time each day in the buggy or in the car. Then once you have a bit of a pattern in place you can start trying to make some of these naps happen in the cot instead. Could you maybe also try a shortened version of any bedtime routine you use to set up a few cues for naptime? It sort of works for us, albeit intermittently.

Agree that only you can decide whether to sleep train or not. There were some interesting discussions about it in yesterday's webchat with Helen Ball from the sleep lab at Durham University - see the homepage.

I am in the same position with my almost six month year old except that I have fed him to sleep a LOT as well. I have done some sleep training for the last two days and my thoughts are:

CONS

1. Very emotionally draining.
2. Very challenging to stay consistent and stick with your plan, but otherwise it is completely unfair on your baby.
3. You really need to stay in a LOT to get the naps sorted, especially if you are like me and prefer to feed at home as well - there really isn't that much time to go out in.
4. I don't think it's possible to get your naps at really set times, because you can't force your baby to be tired or not and they are developing so quickly and don't always start the day at the same time - for timings, I think you just need to watch them.

PROS

1. You can see very quick results on self-settling. Boy slept MUCH better last night than has done in past (11pm-5am, ignoring two very very brief wake-ups where he self-settled after a very short squawk - not even a cry really - which for us is amazing!) Napped in cot for 2.5 hours at lunchtime today as he started to really catch up on all that missed sleep (ignoring one brief wake-up after 20 mins where he self-settled - longest he has ever napped in the cot before is probably 30 mins).
2. Your baby gets more rest and you get more rest = happiness all round. It actually feels like there is MORE time for quality play when you are both well rested.

If you go down this route, I would definitely write down a full plan in advance and stick to it. I leave my boy to cry on his own for max 10 minutes, which I know some people on here would say is barbaric and I would never have considered before I was faced with the reality of an exhausted baby and an exhausted me. However, I know now that I am a massive distraction to him when he really needs to sleep as he just expects milk/patting/chat/more milk, whether he is hungry or not. A few days ago I would have sworn that he just could NOT go to sleep at night on his own unless fed to sleep and then sneaked in to cot - but now I have been proved wrong and it's just as well because I was starting to fear for my sanity.

At the end of the day you just need to do what feels right for you and your baby, and stick to it.

Thank you. I really am battling with this. I can see all the benefits to it in the long term and am pretty sure she would feel better for havibg more decent sleep. So far today she has napped twice for 40 mins each time. We are going out this afternoon and I know that she will be grumpy thorugh overtiredness!

She seems to be napping at around 8am, 11am and 2pm. In fact yesterday she started to yawn and rub eyes at around 10am so I took her out for a walk. She did not fall asleep until 11.05am! no tears or fuss just looking around for 45 mins before she let her eyes close! But, these timings obviously go out of the window if by sheer miracle she sleeps for loinger than 45 mins. I really would like her to have one longer nap in the day as I'm sure it would make such a difference. Don't get me wrong, she is not an unhappy baby but if she hasn't had enough sleep by 4pm she's pretty unsettled.

Well, she constantly suprises me. Little one had her nap at 2.15pm and woke at 3pm. We were out all afternoon and despite a few grizzles she was content to sit and play. She was awake frm 3pm unti 6.45pm and then fell asleep in the car on the way home. I may suffer through the night as a result but maybe not! this is why I am so confused. If I had tried to make her sleep after a couple of hours awake this afternoon would it have caused more hassle than it's worth? who knows!

Maybe she is getting better able to cope with it.

Will see what kind of a night we have and then think again tomorrow!....somtimes I think I am thinking too much! need to just chill out and enjoy it!

I wish I had taken the whole sleep training thing more seriously with my DD when she was 6mth old, I have an 11 month old who's still waking loads and it's a nightmare. It felt wrong to leave her to cry but now I think we've all suffered more from sleep deprivation and in the long run she's cried more and had so many tired days and difficult nights. I have heard of a lot of people who did CC at 6 mnths old it took 3 nights and then baby sleeps though! I like the toddle taming method of CC, it's gentler than verbizing. I followed the NCSS and its lovely but I didnt here many people who followed it and had a baby who then slept through. But at the end of the day its up to you and your intuition and family needs.